When Long Beach Police Officer Lindsey Allison would walk into the canine unit's office, a male colleague frequently leered at her while tucking in his shirt in a suggestive manner. It was his way of emphasizing what several officers recently testified was his attitude toward the elite unit, where Allison also worked: "It's a man's detail and it will always be a man's detail." Officer Melissa Clerkin also saw the Long Beach Police Department as a male enclave.

Two Long Beach policewomen who sued the city and Police Chief Lawrence Binkley for sexual harassment were awarded $3.1 million Thursday by a federal court jury. Lindsey Allison and Melissa Clerkin testified that they were subjected to sexual harassment and that supervisors did little or nothing to stop it. Allison was awarded $1.4 million, Clerkin $1.7 million. Their victory came as a sharp blow to the Police Department and the financially strapped city.

The flowers that came to her desk told her that other women deputies believed in what she was fighting for. The note in the bouquet told her that she would be fighting alone. For more than 10 years, even before the flowers--and the card reading "Thanks, from those who aren't brave enough"--Susan Bouman Paolino has pursued her federal sex discrimination suit against the county Sheriff's Department, after she was denied a sergeant's promotion in spite of her qualifications.

Three male Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, fired for allegedly urging inmates at a county jail in Castaic to commit obscene acts in front of a rookie female deputy and pelt her with food, are seeking reinstatement on the grounds that the hazing of new officers is a common practice condoned by the department. "I don't think it's fair to say the department puts out a bulletin saying it's OK to haze rookies," the deputies' attorney, Richard A.

Almost lost in the Christopher Commission's encyclopedia of shockers--both statistical and anecdotal--are women. Yet in the judgment of some who testified before the commission and the panel's sole woman member, press and public reactions to the report and its calls for a new kind of police work have overlooked this: while 13% of the Police Department are women, none of the department's worst 132 offenders in shootings and in use of force and personnel complaints were women.

Several concerns raised by critics of the Christopher Commission have begun to influence the panel's inquiry into excessive use of force by the Los Angeles Police Department in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating. While community activists have failed to win all of their demands, they have brought about changes in the makeup of the staff and caused the panel to pursue lines of inquiry into women's issues that otherwise may have been overlooked.

Lyle Alzado, whose lawyer said last month that the former NFL star has inoperable brain cancer, was charged Wednesday with battery on a peace officer, authorities said. Alzado is to be arraigned on May 21 in Culver City Municipal Court on one count of misdemeanor battery, said Mike Botula, a spokesman for the district attorney's office. Alzado, 42, is free on $5,000 bail. He is charged with assaulting a woman deputy marshal who was serving papers on him April 16 in a civil matter, Botula said.

Lyle Alzado, an imposing former Raiders defensive lineman, found himself overmatched Tuesday in an early morning encounter with a 110-pound female deputy marshal armed with a can of chemical Mace and some law enforcement friends, according to authorities.

A former Los Angeles policewoman who allegedly became romantically involved with a high school football player while serving as an undercover narcotics officer has lost yet another bid to get her job back. A Police Department Board of Rights late Tuesday ruled that Sharon Fischer should not be reinstated after her dismissal for writing sexually suggestive letters to the 17-year-old Granada Hills student, telephoning him at home and maintaining an improper relationship with a minor.

Five male Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies will be fired for allegedly urging inmates at a county jail facility in Saugus to harass a rookie female deputy as part of a hazing scheme, sheriff's officials said Tuesday. A five-month internal investigation found that some inmates at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, at the urging of deputies, exposed themselves and threw food at Deputy Alyson A. Fox, 26, who has filed a $1-million claim against the Sheriff's Department.